Cravings during menopause are something almost every woman I work with knows firsthand. You eat well all week. Then Tuesday night hits, or maybe Wednesday, and it happens. The absolute need for something sweet, something salty, something. By Friday you’ve already decided Monday is a fresh start. Again. What happens over the weekend after that. we’ll come back to that. ??
You’ve started to believe something is wrong with you. That you lack discipline. And yet, you most likely have a hormone problem, and those are very different things.
What’s Actually Happening
Estrogen is not just a reproductive hormone. It works directly in the brain, regulating serotonin and dopamine: the neurochemicals behind mood, motivation, and your sense of fullness after eating. When estrogen drops during perimenopause, your brain loses part of its regulation system and goes looking for fast replacements. Sugar produces a rapid dopamine hit. Carbohydrates push serotonin up. Your brain is compensating for the estrogen deficit. You don’t have much control over that.
Bendis et al. (Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2024, PMID 38586193) mapped exactly how estradiol affects these systems. And if you want to understand the broader mechanism in plain language, Stephan Guyenet’s The Hungry Brain covers how your brain’s reward system drives food choices and why willpower was never going to win this fight.
Estrogen also plays a role in how your body regulates hunger and fullness. As levels fall, your brain becomes less sensitive to leptin, the hormone that tells you you’ve eaten enough. The signal is being sent, it’s just getting through less clearly than it used to. You eat a full meal and still feel like you haven’t touched anything. Appetite regulation becomes unreliable in ways that have nothing to do with self-control.
Then the sleep piece. Night sweats and hot flushes break your sleep. Broken sleep raises cortisol. Cortisol drives cravings for sugar and fat, the opposite of what you’re trying to eat. One thing drives to the next, and you are sitting at the chocolate bar after a full good dinner.
What Actually Breaks It
Protein at every meal
25-30g protein at every meal. The most powerful satiety tool at this stage of life. It stabilises blood sugar, supports appetite regulation, and keeps you full long enough to make food decisions from a calm place rather than a desperate scramble.
Plan your food the day before
Not a spreadsheet, just a look at what’s happening tomorrow, what you have at home, what makes sense. Five minutes the night before means you stop thinking about food all day. The cake in the freezer stops being a negotiation. You don’t use food as reward or punishment. It is planned, it is consistent with your long-term health goals.
No skipped meals
Every time you skip a meal, blood sugar drops and by the time you eat, your body is running on stress hormones. Consistent meal timing prevents those dips, and the panic eating that follows.
Have a plan B ready
A protein bar in your bag. Yoghurt in the fridge. Cherry tomatoes on the counter. Having an answer ready before you’re already hungry means you never have to make that decision in the worst possible moment.
Resistance training
When you lift weights, your muscles contract and pull glucose out of the bloodstream directly, without needing insulin. Do that regularly and your cells become more responsive to insulin overall, your body manages blood sugar more efficiently, with less of the spiking and crashing that drives cravings.
From your mid-40s, you lose roughly 1-2% of muscle mass every year unless you work against it. Less muscle means slower metabolism, weaker bones, higher fracture risk (sarcopenia and osteopenia). Lifting is the only thing that stops that process. Not walking or swimming. Not yoga. Weights. Two sessions a week is enough.
Fix your sleep
Same bedtime, cool room, no screens, actively managing night sweats. This lowers baseline cortisol over time. Cortisol is your primary stress hormone, and one of its jobs is pushing your brain toward fast energy sources, sugar and fat, because evolutionarily, stress meant physical danger. That response is still running. Fix the sleep and that feeling reduces considerably.
When you do give in, sit down and enjoy it
If you give in to a craving, sit down and actually eat it. Slowly. Enjoy it completely. We are not robots. Food is pleasure and it is connection and love, and some things are just genuinely good. Eat it. Enjoy it. Move on. What doesn’t work is eating it standing over the sink while berating yourself, you get the calories and the guilt, with none of the pleasure.
Where to Start
Come next Monday with intention, with a plan. Pick one or two strategies from above, just one or two, and do them properly for two to three weeks before you add anything else. Know what you’re eating before the day starts. Don’t fear the craving when it comes. You now understand why it’s there.
Knowing the mechanism doesn’t make the craving disappear, but it changes the deal. You also know what you can do to work with your current physiology. The information is yours. What you do with it is on you.
If you want more support, the Craving Killer guide is a practical starting point. Contact me and I’ll send it directly to your mailbox.
Scientific Reference
Bendis PC, Zimmerman S, Onisiforou A, Zanos P, Georgiou P. The impact of estradiol on serotonin, glutamate, and dopamine systems. Front Neurosci. 2024 Mar 22;18:1348551. PMID 38586193.
